Often, large manufacturers having multiple plant locations must conduct design team meetings to coordinate the efforts of engineers and designers scattered amongst the different sites. Sometimes, staff meetings are necessary for managers overseeing employees at those multiple sites. Additionally, meetings might be required to monitor critical project milestones, synchronize plant operations, preparations of logistics, conduct installation, troubleshooting, etc. The attendees for these meetings might be geographically dispersed. For professional service firms such as investment banking, brokerages, lawyers, and accountants, meetings are frequently held to discuss various matters. Again, the attendees are frequently from different locations.
It is quite expensive for each individual to physically attend the meeting. Airfare, car rental, and hotel accommodations can be quite expensive. Furthermore, the attendees' valuable time is wasted traveling to and from the meeting site. These expenditures are compounded if attendees have to travel great distances or internationally. Moreover, there could be complications in making reservations. Furthermore, setting up and coordinating the meeting and rescheduling it if need be, is a thankless, time-consuming, and tedious task.
One way for minimizing costs, time, and frustration involves teleconferencing. Teleconferencing is the process of conducting a meeting with a group of attendees simultaneously over the telephone. Thereby, each of the attendees can communicate in real-time, without having to actually be there in-person.
In the past, teleconferencing was initiated in Private Branch Exchange (PBX) telephone systems by a first attendee calling a second attendee; placing that second attendee on hold; calling a third attendee; placing the third attendee on hold; and repeating this process until all the attendees had been accessed. This prior art teleconferencing system suffers from several disadvantages. The conferencing functionality is cumbersome, unwieldy, and difficult for the user to invoke. Each of the attendees are serially patched in to the conference on a piece-meal basis. The degradation in voice quality becomes annoying when three or more parties are conferenced together. Furthermore, it was quite difficult to handle overflows, cancellations, no-shows, etc.
One alternative to PBX teleconferencing has been to utilize service bureau providers for multi-site conferencing. Basically, a service bureau provider acts as an intermediary between the different sites. An operator speaks with callers wishing to engage in a telephone conference and provides the necessary telephone connecting and switching functions to enable the teleconference to occur. Although a service bureau provider offers superior functionality over standard PBX conferencing, a provider is extremely expensive for the regular user of conference calls.
In some instances, large corporations have taken to installing customer premise equipment, such as conference bridges, to help defray costs. A conference bridge provides a teleconferencing interface between different sites. Before the meeting occurs, an operator assigns a bridge number for that meeting. The bridge number is disbursed to the attendees. At the appointed meeting time, each of the attendees calls a central number to speak with a corporate operator. Once the caller tells the corporate operator the bridge number, the operator connects the caller to the bridge. Once connected, the conference bridge automatically handles all the requisite switching.
Typically, both service bureau providers and conference bridge applications require a human operator to coordinate, establish, and otherwise facilitate the entire teleconferencing process. Obviously, having a human operator increases the overall cost. Furthermore, unless the service bureau and conference bridge is monitored by the operator twenty-four hours a day, users might be limited to certain times in which they can access particular teleconferencing functionalities. Another problem is that an operator can only handle one call at a time. During peak hours, it might be necessary to employ multiple operators. Moreover, having a human operator introduces another source for error. Yet another problem of having to access the teleconferencing system via an operator is that security might be compromised. Often, the business being discussed pertains to delicate, serious, and highly confidential matters. Third party access, such as access by the operator, to these discussions is highly undesirable. This is especially true where the operator is not even employed by the conferees.
In addition, typical prior art teleconferencing systems suffer from several functional drawbacks. When a party is first connected into a teleconference, the calling party is unaware of who the current participants are (i.e., the parties who have already been connected into the teleconference). Likewise, current participants will want to know the identity of a caller logging into the teleconference. Similarly, whenever a party logs out of the teleconference, the remaining conferees will want to be apprised of who has left. There is much confusion each time someone logs in or out of the teleconference. Although an operator can provide relief from these problems, having an operator introduces its own problems as discussed above.
Another drawback is that typical prior art teleconferencing systems do not have the capability of providing subconferencing. Frequently, several conferees will wish to discuss side issues apart from the main conference. Those parties wishing to hold a side conference have to hang-up; initiate a new conference amongst themselves; terminate the new conference when completed; and rejoin the original conference. There does not exist any mechanism for allowing two or more conferees to break away to a side conference and then to later rejoin the main conference.
Yet another drawback is that it can be quite difficult to determine who is currently speaking. This problem of keeping track of who is saying what is especially troublesome when the conference includes strangers whose voice patterns are unfamiliar. It can be difficult to follow the gist of the conversation if one is unsure of the speaker's identity.
Thus, there is a need in the teleconferencing prior art for an apparatus and method for providing enhanced features without having to go through an operator. It would be preferable if such a teleconferencing system included some security control to ensure access only to the authorized parties. It would also be preferable if such a system also had subconferencing as well as speaker identification capabilities.